Indigestible reading

On his blog Ian Bogost discusses an interesting point made in Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism: today's (higher education) students do not want to read books. They think reading is boring because it doesn't have the immediate gratification of, say, a hamburger.
Fisher argues that reading Nietsche is all about experiencing the indigestibility of the text. Bogost compares this to unobvious videogames, that are often as indigestible as reading Nietsche.

At the same moment Newsweek presents results from a US study on the effects of playing games on IQ. It turned out that playing small, 'obvious' games for 8 weeks, leads to the same IQ increase among children as one year of regular education (12 to 13 IQ points).
This kind of studies bear the risk of defining new media as the correct model for educational renewal or development. The 'saccharine gratification' (quote from Bogost) of the gaming experience leads to student motivation, which can be misinterpreted by educators as 'they think the content is interesting'.

German Net generation study

Finally, an English (abridged) version of Schulmeister's extensive study on the existence of the Net generation (or rather non-existence) is available. Earlier I worked my way through the German extended version.

The most important point Schulmeister makes is that you have to study interactive media use in the context of everyday life. For many social scientists this is obvious, but much Net generation literature focuses solely on the use of interactive media.

Mark Bullen gives an overview of the main conclusions. In regard of my own research these two are most interesting:

The Use of Media: It turns out that the use of media alone is not sufficient for the existence of the net generation but rather that the motives for the use of media are essential in the context of such an analysis.

The Motivation for the Use of Media: The preferences of the young for specific internet activities provide information about the spectrum of their interests; the age distribution of their preferences suggests that the actual interests are influenced by socialization.

Designing games in a mock-up environment

As part of the Game Design & Technology programme at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, students have to paper-prototype their games.
Marcel de Leeuwe discusses some digital mock-up tools on his weblog. In a reply to this post Moocha refers to an instructive YouTube video. The best tool, in my opinion, remains pen and paper...

Free thoughts!

Recently some blogs mentioned of a conference where the audience was asked not to twitter or take pictures during presentations (Steve Wheeler, Wilfred Rubens).

The discussion on Steve Wheeler's blog resulted in a link to this YouTube video:



Thoughts are free, who can guess them?
They flee by like nocturnal shadows.
No man can know them, no hunter can shoot them,
with powder and lead: Thoughts are free!

I think what I want, and what delights me,
still always reticent, and as it is suitable.
My wish and desire, no one can deny me
and so it will always be: Thoughts are free!

I love wine, and my girl even more,
Only I like her best of all.
I'm not alone with my glass of wine,
my girl is with me: Thoughts are free!
..

Science: open source and open access

"In science two things are scarce: good experimental data and experts' attention" states scientist Michael Nielsen in Dutch magazine Intermediair.

The article (in Dutch) discusses the tension between the 300 year old mores of journal publications and the open source/open access possibilities enabled by the web. Nielsen is an advocate of open source science. The article reminded me of Eric Raymond's paper 'The Cathedral and the bazaar' that describes the benefits of open source development.

So what to do if you want to make a career in science, but also support the open source movement? Are there any indexed open access journals?
In educational research unfortunately not many journals are available. The Directory of open access & hybrid journals lists 308 peer-reviewd journals under 'social sciences - education', many of them in Spanish. A similar list can be found at AERA. One of the few open access journals in this field with an sci-ranking is Educational Technology and Society (impact factor 0.9).

Additional sources:
- Bas Savenije gives an interesting overview of the movement to open access journals (in Dutch)
- Open access timeline, started by Peter Suber, now a wiki.

Youth and interactive media

My report on the use of interactive media among contemporary youth was published last month by Dutch research centre Kennisnet. The report is a non-scientific description of the survey I did as part of my PhD project. The report (in Dutch) describes in detail a diversity in both interactive media use and users.
The main conclusions: The Net generation does not exist (duh..) and education should be careful in applying games and social software as learning tools.
Dutch blogs Wilfred Rubens and Educate the crowd mentioned the report.